


Silence

by edylue



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Minor Violence, Post-Death in the Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 08:21:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10940625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edylue/pseuds/edylue
Summary: Someone has popped their fingers.





	Silence

**Author's Note:**

> request: pet peeves

She sits in silence, eyes reflecting words of classic literature back onto the yellowing page. The knowledge isn't retainable—at least not to her. The letters form to words of varying lengths. Words blend into sentences. Sentences melt into paragraphs, pages upon pages of a story that will not stick to her brain. They fly off like spit on a tongue, blood on a paper cut.

But she still sits, big blue orbs racing across the passages, deciphering like a foreign language.

And then, she hears it.

It's like a car accident, an ambulance shrieking in the night—it sticks out, won't go away; it lingers in the atmosphere.

Someone has popped their fingers.

Her dad—to be more exact. He's reading the newspaper from the morning, black thick frames sliding down and finally resting at the end of his pale nose. The skin on it is peeling from the afternoon sun beaming down on it for eight hours a day. She often wonders if it'll start bleeding if the next layer of skin burns through, and then she's snapped out of her thoughts by another loud _crack, crack, crack_ as the digits on his left hand is bent backward, allowing the air pockets to pop and release the built up pressure.

The sound disturbs her reading—not that she was retaining it anyway. She's reminded of the phrase "it's the thought that counts". She sticks her tongue out of her mouth in uttermost disgust as she pulls the book to her face and burrows in the layers of words and intelligence.

Another pop.

She shakes and slowly pulls back to reveal the book once more. She concentrates on the novel, the reading material she _has_ to cover that night, and she calms down—a cat curling up on a fluffy pillow, paws outstretched to an invisible being.

*

The brown lounge chair she was stationed in yesterday is taken when she gets out of the shower. Her dad is there, watching television. The room is nice and loud, so as she takes her seat on the couch with her book, she doesn't feel disturbed by the _crack, crack, crack_ of her father's fingers.

She pulls the thick pages apart and sits in her own makeshift silence, the program her dad's watching droning on and on about some new product to clean your ears.

*

She is done with the book a few nights later. She almost admitted to her teacher she liked it. _Almost._

She had sat in the living room each night, shoveling pages down her cranium like a thirsty dog with water. She had tried to be civil and collected as she heard the popping of her father's fingers each night at the stroke of 07:00 p.m. The sound is like a siren to her; it digs under her flesh and makes pins and needles poke through, piercing it. She rubs her funny bone with a trembling hand.

The grandfather clock in the hallway approaches seven. She's anxious as she gazes with longing eyes at her dad. She has nothing to preoccupy herself. Her nails touch the hem of her tee, rubbing it between index finger and thumb. Her mother had given it to her the day before her passing. The memory forces a quiver up her backbone.

Her father raises a hand.

She watches.

He sets it back down on his slight pouch of a stomach.

A breath escapes her awfully chapped lips. Her legs raise up, knees bumping together; they carry her to her bedroom, and she sits in silence.

*

Her mother visits her in her dreams. They have matching hair and smiles. "Are you two sisters?" people often joked. No. They weren't sisters. Thirty-two and sixteen. Quite a difference. Only similar sounding names, but that's nothing of any significance. Ashley and Alicia. Mother and daughter. Dead and alive.

She awakes in silence.

Tears cling to her face, and she grabs at the blonde hair attached to her scalp. She pulls and pulls, imagining the pain being tripled, the skin tearing in two down the middle, drenching the hair red, red, red. She pictures her mother and tightens her grip.

 _Crack, crack, crack_.

Groan.

The silence is broken, and she is a spicy red pepper.

Like a robot, she stands and shuffles to the bedroom next to hers with a blank expression on her face, the emotion flooding out of her eyes. The floor creaks, and she cringes.

Her blue eyes meet her father's in the dark. They stare back. "What's wrong, dear?" he asks, raising into a seating position. He gropes to find the light, and she pounces on the bed and screams like a banshee. Her hands fly up and attach to his, and he takes this as his chance to console her. "What's wrong, honey?" he repeats, choosing a different pet name this times around. "Alicia, sweetheart?"

Her thoughts are a scrambled egg. She squeezes his hands and crushes them. He yelps, and she hangs on, teeth grinding together. A low inhumane growl settles in her chest, rising up as she spreads her lips into a big sneer across her whole face. She says one thing—"Mother did that"—before switching her strong hold to his fingers.

Her thumbs press against the underside of the knuckles, and with a newfound, odd strength, she pushes, pushes, pushes, and the first two fingers on each of his hands give one last _crack, crack, crack_ as they awkwardly bend and settle against the back of his hand. He screeches and watches the blood pour out of the broken bone, muscle, tissue. He stares and cries, and she stares back. She doesn't make a sound—just smears the fluid all over the appendages as a sick form of cast. A smile unfolds on her face.

"Don't," she starts in a low mumble, "pop your bloody fingers again."

And she gets up and leaves the bedroom. She snatches a bottle of water from the refrigerator and sits in her chair. She laps at the liquid, spilling it all down her chin, her front, the smooth flesh on her thighs.

The bottle is empty when the clock strikes 03:00 a.m. A toss behind her is where it goes before pulling her legs to her chest, getting them damp with water and small patches of drying blood.

She watches at the cream-colored walls and sits in silence.


End file.
